[TSteven]

Kappa Sigma Fraternity, founded in the United States in 1869, traces it's history back to Renaissance Italy.

Kappa Sigma History
From the Beta-Nu Chapter of Kappa Sigma at The University of Kentucky

Kappa Sigma's historical and spiritual founding took place 1400 in Bologna, Italy; "The City of Letters." A Greek scholar by the name of Manuel Chrysoloras came to Italy as an emissary from the Greek Emperor and became a professor of Greek at the University of Bologna. While at Bologna he and five of his students formed a society based on the mutual protection of its members from the corrupt and evil governor of Bologna, Baldassare Cossa. Cossa practiced robbery and extortion on the university students. The work of these men inspired another group of men to carry on this tradition 469 years later.

In 1869 in the United States, Greek Letter Organizations were well established. The first one in the U.S. was Phi Beta Kappa in 1776 which is now a prestigious national honor society at nearly every university in the Nation. Fraternities had gone into a lax during the American Civil War which ended only 4 years previous to Kappa Sigma's founding, and College Fraternities played a major role in the reunification of College Students.

At the University of Virginia, the situation was no different. Five men: William Grigsby McCormick, George Miles Arnold, Edmund Law Rogers, John Covert Boyd, and Frank Courtney Nicodemus came together on December 10, 1869 and founded the Kappa Sigma Fraternity at McCormick's residence at 46 East Lawn. These men formed a sustaining brotherhood which would proove to be so strong that it was the foundation for one of the largest College Fraternities in the World.